Research Associate
Weill Cornell Medical College
Dr. Xue Dong is a research associate in Department of Surgery, Weill Cornell Medicine. She completed two-year general surgery residency in China and 4 year postdoctoral fellowship in Weill Cornell Medicine. Her research focuses on the tissue engineering strategies in breast, facial and ear reconstruction with biodegradable materials and cartilage, fat grafting and breast cancer research.
As early as a medical student, she was firstly introduced to tissue engineering research by working on collagen-based microspheres in Weill Cornell Medical College, not only making them into essential protein delivery to fix prenatal cleft lip in mouse model but also incorporating them into collagen bulk to fabricate dermal substitutes for wound healing. This early research exposure inspired her, and ever since she has developed a deeper understanding of scientific thinking and how it could be combined with clinical questions that she has encountered in the clinical observation and practice. During residency in general surgery, especially those breast cancer patients suffering from surgery, chemotherapy and complications from breast reconstructions, challenged her and made her focus more on breast cancer-related research, including evaluating clinical treatment effects in data-based retrospective studies, optimizing three-dimensional biomaterial-printed implant scaffolds for nipple reconstruction, exploring fat grafting in soft tissue volume filling and in-vitro biomimetic platform development for breast cancer studies (especially BIA-ALCL).